Hospital patients are often encumbered with individual intravenous or catheter tubes which become entangled with the patients' clothing, bedding, and/or each other, restricting the patients' movement.
In observation, post-op patients and patients receiving oncology treatments, there are multiple IV lines going into the patients. Lines often get tangled in each other. When receiving chemotherapy, the lines are taped onto the patients' skin to keep the IV lines stable. When patients are post-op and lying in bed, if the patient is not still and sedentary, lines are often on the right and left hand side of the patient. They get tangled together. When the patient moves from the right to the left, these lines can often get pulled out.
During post op procedures, doctors ask their patients to walk in the hospital hallways for exercise. Patients are still on IVs for their medications and hydration. To enable the patient to exercise, the IVs are on a rolling stand and the lines may drag on the floor and can become contaminated or caught up in the wheels of the rolling stand. When patients using walkers have IV lines, the lines are often left dangling and dragging on the floor, or they can get caught up in the front wheels of the walker.
Typically, very often there is only surgical tape to hold the IV lies in place and when the IV lines are removed with the tape, the tape catches the hair of the patients' body. In other cases, the tape may not always hold. The problem with these approaches is that prior art systems do not adequately address the problem of disorganization, tangling/dragging of IV lines.
Prior art documents known to the Applicant include:
U.S. Pat.PublicationNo.TitleDate5,690,617Adjusting catheter holding device19976,458,104IV administration lines fastening and2002identification device3,696,920Device for organizing objects19723,782,388Medical tube holder19745,944,696Swivel clip medical tube holder19996,228,064Intravenous anchor system20012001/0049504IV administration lines fastening and2001identification device2005/0234405Site securement device for securing2005intravascular tubing3,747,166Hose holder19734,707,906Method of attaching tube to a tube1987holder5,507,460Tubing holder especially for patient1996applications5,336,179Line organizer1994
However, there is still a need for an intravenous line organizing system that addresses at least one of the above-mentioned problems.